


The Sacred Band

by daredevilmoon



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M, WW1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 04:13:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3235829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daredevilmoon/pseuds/daredevilmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas and the Duke of Crowborough meet once more in France, on leave.</p><p>
  <i>“I thought for a moment I’d imagined you,” Philip said, smiling dazedly. “Particularly when you didn’t answer. I thought I’d finally gone.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sacred Band

The city wasn’t incredibly loud, but Thomas’s mind was miles elsewhere, back to the fields and to Blighty in turn - far enough away that he didn’t hear anyone speaking to him for a good while as he walked around. Finally, the voice cut through the knot of his thoughts at precisely its owner caught him up.

For a moment, Thomas completely thought he was imagining him - not as though it were something so purely of his greatest dreams, but because it seemed the most unlikely thing in all the world. Philip, standing before him with a strange look upon his face; he didn’t look much older than he had, but something in his face had changed. Thomas supposed the same must have gone for himself. So, too, were their fashions changed and in much the same key - though Philip wore, naturally, the spiffing togs of a CO.

“I thought for a moment I’d imagined you,” Philip said, smiling dazedly. “Particularly when you didn’t answer. I thought I’d finally gone.”

“No such easy ticket for you,” Thomas said, though his voice was devoid of wrath. “Fancy seeing a fine duke named Sam Browne.”

“And a fine footman as a body-snatcher. We’ve done exceedingly well for ourselves, haven’t we?” Philip returned in kind. They eyed one another for a moment when Philip simply raised his eyebrows and asked, “Would you care to have a drink with me? I’m staying at an hotel not far from here.”

Thomas had told himself again and again, repeated it as a first note of a child’s piano lesson, that he hadn’t ever loved Philip. Yet now, as time increased and the world cracked in two, it seemed absurd to deny the fact.

Philip had always been different. He had never treated Thomas as a toy, as some of the other toffs were wont to do (a thing Thomas never really minded if he was played with like _that_ ), but he had treated him as man. It seemed only fitting, both of them naked in Philip’s silk sheets that it should be so; the only difference in their facts for that moment seemed to be accent. Thomas had even found his upstairs accent slipping on occasion, but Philip had never seemed to be bothered by it. He had never been patronising, either: had listened to Thomas’s frankly impertinent jokes about his employers and laughed along with him, had told Thomas of his fear of marriage and need for an heiress. Thomas would have laughed at that, had it been anyone else, yet - he was always different.

He sympathised with part of Philip’s fears then as he did now, standing as he was before him in that CO uniform. He wondered whether Philip had an heir at home to carry on if he were killed. Thomas’s eyes flickered over him briefly, taking him in- to Hell with it, he decided. It sounded a damned sight better than anything else he might have done with his spare time.

“All right,” he agreed. Philip’s face lightened some and he smiled more genuinely now, leading Thomas to remember exactly why he had chanced that first trip to a duke’s bedchamber.

 

“When did you join?” Philip asked, leaning his head against the garish wallpaper. The hotel was nothing near so nice one Philip might have visited before, but it served its purpose well enough.

“Nearly before it even started. Thought doing a medical course might get me home service,” Thomas admitted, taking a drink of the wine before him. It wasn’t as good as what he’d sneaked from Crawleys’s cellar, but it was still more impressive than anything he could have afforded. “Seems a laugh now, almost.”

“Almost.”

“Well, as funny as things get here. What about you? When you’d switch the coronets?” He asked wryly. Philip frowned at him.

“Not that quickly, naturally - but, you know, needs must. How would it look for a duke to flee to Ireland?” Philip asked, laughing humourlessly.

“Like he were coward, maybe,” Thomas said, his voice a little challenging. He didn’t know, really, that he considered Philip a coward for having left him, but had to say something to broach the subject of the past. He was awfully tired of France, 1915 and longed for that summer again - if only in memory, even in wrath.

“Perhaps,” Philip said. Thomas waited for him to speak again, but Philip fell in to staring down at his wine, his mouth screwed up slightly.

“Did you ever get your heiress?”

“No. I haven’t been able to quite bear the idea yet. I thought getting rid of you might make it simpler, but it -  didn’t. I tried to not go with men for a Season, to not give over to distractions, which did me no better in that regard; if you don’t like Bartok not listening to Beethoven is hardly going to make you go out to listen to Bartok. The facts remain as they were. I appear to be putting some of them off for as long as I can,” Philip admitted, catching Thomas’s eyes. Thomas’s brow furrowed and he cocked his head to the side slightly, again feeling just enough of Philip’s plight to sympathise.

“There isn’t much surely, with this,” Thomas said.

“God willing there is,” Philip said, shrugging. “Though perhaps I oughtn’t put any trust in him as regards myself.”

“Nor me,” Thomas agreed.

A strain of laughter bubbled over the table between the two of them, followed in time by Philip’s hand finding Thomas’s. He looked at their intertwined fingers, more similar now than they had been before the war, and ran his thumb along Philip’s palm, sighing. He was so tired: mentally, physically; there were some days he felt as though he could hardly move and yet marched ten miles.

The reprieve that was to be found in such simplicity as this made Thomas’s throat begin to hurt with an awful sorrow, aimed at everything and nothing all at once. Philip squeezed his hand and Thomas turned his head away, spoiling his own mood as he brought his hand onto his side of the table. He took a hurried drink of wine.

“Thomas?”

Thomas simply shut his eyes and willed the ball of sorrow to sink back into his stomach, where the bile turned it into fear once more. He heard Philip take another drink and set his glass back down, then the sound of his chair rattle as he stood.

One of Philip’s hands was on his neck, running his fingers through Thomas’s filthy hair, dragging his nails backward along his scalp. Thomas took Philip’s hand in his own and brought it around, kissing his palm as he opened his eyes to look up at Philip.

“What a sorry pair of buggers,” Thomas said quietly, smiling against Philip’s palm.

“A pathetic sort of men,” Philip agreed, his own smile returning: small and warm and everything France was not. Thomas slid his hand into the buttons between Philip’s jacket and pulled him down, capturing the smile with his lips. It was a chaste little kiss, as sort had rarely been shared between them and it seemed the most innocent thing Thomas had ever done with another man.

Thomas stood up, knocking the chair back into the wall, and pressed himself full against Philip, feeling the press of his chest and letting the kiss turn animalistic in response. He held Philip’s neck and walked him backward to the bed, their mouths scarcely apart for a moment when Philip pulled away abruptly. Thomas straightened, surprised; his brow furrowed.

“I - “

“The door,” Philip said breathlessly, shaking his head to dispel Thomas’s thoughts. “There aren’t locks anymore. Suicides. Close it with one of the chairs.” Thomas cocked an eyebrow at him, amused, as he made to do so. “School.”

Thomas returned to Philip with a vigour he was surprised he felt; it could simply have been the promise of pleasure, genuine pleasure, which spurred him on. All the same, Philip was quite clearly surprised to be knocked backward onto the bed by Thomas’s body, as much so as the bed, which made a worrying noise. Thomas stilled for a moment, waiting to see whether the body would collapse.

Satisfied that it would remain standing, Philip shifted on the bed lengthwise and Thomas followed, hovering over him on hands and knees. If he only looked at Philip’s face - his dark eyes nearly black, lips ruddied with kissing - he could pretend, maybe. Then the amusement seemed to have left those eyes, those lips and Thomas knew, without doubt, they were sharing the same thought.

Thomas wished they could have fucked as they had then, but knew all too many reasons why that was out of the question. He leaned down to kiss him again, quickly, then hurriedly stripped himself of his jacket, letting it fall to the floor as Philip followed suit. Thomas undid both of their flies and reached within Philip’s to take his half-hard prick in hand; oh, here was a thing he had missed. Philip’s head fell back as Thomas stroked him to his full size, running his thumb repeatedly along the ridge at the underside for as much his pleasure. It was too intoxicating a sight, pulsing and heavy against his fingers; Thomas ran his tongue along the path traced by his thumb and felt Philip jump with surprise at the choice.

It was a poor one; he would never have done this to anyone in his company, not even with anyone else’s mouth, but Philip had to have been cleaner than anyone there - by virtue of being an officer, though not least because he’d been in this hotel long enough for a wash.

“Good Christ,” Philip murmured, running his thumb along Thomas’s hollowed cheek for a moment and shivering. “Come here - not like that, I want to kiss you.”

Thomas looked up at him through his eyelashes, releasing him; Thomas laughed to himself as he moved up Philip’s body, feeling the warmth of his body through his shirt, feeling it pressed to his own when he rested his weight over Philip. They both gave soft little groans, quickly stifled into one another when their pricks slipped against one another.

It was over much too quickly for Thomas’s preferences, though it was nothing they could have helped; loneliness had loomed large in those early sighs. They wiped themselves off with their handkerchiefs and simply lay for a long while, in nearly the same position they had been in previously but for Thomas’s head beneath Philip’s chin.

Thomas appreciated the comfort of both the bed and situation, but was too afraid of falling asleep and not waking up at a proper time to fall asleep, despite his body’s wishes. Philip’s hand stroking soothing lines on his back was not helping matters; he nearly asked him to stop, before realising this might be the last time either would find such affections. Everything in that thought made his blood run cold, made him feel a tightness all through his chest, which he hated. He wasn’t a neurasthenic, he was only - god, he was only afraid.

“D’you suppose we’ll make it out?” Thomas asked, voice as shaky as he felt. He kept his gaze firmly in the opposite direction to Philip’s face.

“England? Or the two of us?”

“The two of us.”

“Boche willing,” Philip said, lightly. Then, more seriously, “I do hope so, Thomas. Shall we meet again?”

“You wouldn’t write me, would you?”

“No," Philip replied simply.

“Maybe just in Hell, then.”

Philip hummed, the sound vibrating against Thomas from where he lay - at this, Thomas did prop himself upon his elbow, turning to find Philip wearing a sardonic expression. His fingers ran through Thomas's hair once more as he asked what was only true: “But isn’t that where we are?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Because what is more pertinent than a WW1 fic about a character from the first episode? Nothing. Not in my heart, anyway.


End file.
